1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the network mobility in the field of mobile communication technologies, providing access to Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) and Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) nodes, when User Equipment (UE) is connected to the network providing access to only one of the IP versions. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method to enable combination of network controlled mobility and LE controlled mobility between different IP versions.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a dual stack UE moves into a network that supports only a single IP version, it is necessary to provide support to the UE in order to continue the sessions which were started in either of the IP versions. Dual Stack Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (DSMIPv6) provides the mechanism for the use of the IPv6 IP address when the UE is connected via IPv4 (in addition to IPv4 nodes) and to use IPv4 addresses in addition to IPv6 when the LE is connected to an IPv6 only network.
Similarly, the network needs to be able to control the mobility of a LE between different points of attachments. Thus, when a dual stack LE moves into a network which supports only a single IP version, current DSMIPv6 mechanisms result in increased header overhead and signaling overhead over the air.
Currently, there is no mechanism to support the combined network based and UE based mobility mechanisms. If the UE needs to support the dual stack mobility with the network supporting only one of the IP versions, there is no current mechanism to reduce the header overhead. Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a support mechanism for a combination of network controlled mobility and UE controlled mobility between different IP versions.